Family men have a shadowy presence in Australian history. Using
interviews recorded in the 1980s for the Australia 1938 Oral History
Project, Professor Alistair Thomson rediscovers the experience of
fathers and fathering, and husbands and marriage, in the decade
before the Second World War. What roles did men play in families
and what were the expectations of domestic masculinity? How did
men manage their competing and changing roles as breadwinners
and family men, husbands and fathers? In what ways did men’s family roles vary across class, region and life stage? How do people recall fathers and fatherhood?

Alistair Thomson is Professor of History at Monash University. His research explores the ways in which different kinds of life-story
evidence can illuminate the past and its meanings in the present lives of individuals and society.